


Four Years

by make_your_own_world



Series: Sam Winchester x Reader Short Stories/Oneshots [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Cupid (mentioned) - Freeform, Demons, F/M, Fate (mentioned) - Freeform, Grieving, Happy Ending, Shifters, Skinwalker, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17876900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/make_your_own_world/pseuds/make_your_own_world
Summary: Your father was a hunter so you grew up on the road. Most of the time he would drop you off at Bobby's whenever he went on a hunt, so you became close with the Winchesters. Dean even called you his little sister.You haven't talked to them in four years, though, not after Sam left for Stanford. Now they hear that you've gone missing and they're determined to find you, but complications arise, because their lives are never easy, are they?





	1. Looking

**Author's Note:**

> Y/N Y/L/N: Your Name Your Last Name  
> Y/F/N: Your Father's Name

Dean jumps when Ash drops a thick folder on the counter next to him.

His hand knocks over the room-temperature beer bottle he’d been nursing from last night and it spills in his lap. The liquid, and smash of the bottle on the ground, make him open his eyes with shock. The light hurts his eyes and starts a throbbing headache that feels like his brain is just a bit too large for his skull. Dean throws up a hand to his face to shield his eyes but, having forgotten he was sitting on a stool when he passed out, tilts back just a bit too far.

“Whoa!”

He hits the ground and has to gasp for a second to get air into his empty lungs.

All this happens in a span of five seconds and Dean’s hungover brain makes that whirring noise old laptops make when they’re turning on before he can fully process that, yes, he is on the ground, his shoulder and tailbone ache now, and his headache was only worsened by his head hitting the hard floor.

A loud burst of laughter makes Dean groan.

Sam bends over at the waist, shoulders shuddering as he laughs.

“Shut up,” Dean grumbles. “Bitch.”

Sam hiccups, unable to wipe the shit-eating grin off his face. “You’re not very alert for a hunter, you jerk.”

“I’m allowed to celebrate saving a kid’s life,” Dean mumbles back, cracking open an eye with caution.

The smile slides right off Sam’s face at the reminder of the case they’d just finished. A lone werewolf had been hiding in the woods near a town and kidnapped a bunch of kids in order to turn them and create a new pack. They’d all been turned except one.

It makes Sam a little sick to think about walking into the bloodbath—one of the turned kids had gotten loose and killed the others.

“I guess,” the younger Winchester mutters.

“Why’d you wake me up?”

Jo nudges his form with the toe of her boot. “We’ve got a roadhouse to run. Plus, we have a case for you. And it was  _ really _ funny.”

That piques Dean’s curiosity. “What is it? Vamps? Wendigo? Werewolf?”

“We’re not sure,” Ash answers, handing the folder to Sam to rifle through. “Hunters have been dropping off the grid. A lot.”

“We’ve got people that’ve been finding abandoned cars and phones, too,” Jo adds. “Then the missing hunters show up—sometimes—and they set up a normal life. These are people that have shown no inclination to leave before, mind you.”

“So hunters are leaving the life?” Dean asks, sitting up to frown at Jo. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Uh, the disappearance?” Jo snaps. “The abandoned cars and phones? They don’t go back for their shit, Dean. It’s just there, and police have been finding the arsenals in the trunk. There are more cops breathing down people’s necks at all times.  _ Hunters _ leaving the life? Some of them, sure, but people like Bruce Chappell and Y/N Y/L/N—they  _ like _ the life. Y/N said to me a bunch of times how much she’d hated school.”

“Hold on, did you say Y/N Y/L/N?” Dean interrupts. He and Sam share a worried look. Now there’s no way they won’t take the case.

“Yeah.” Jo bites her lip, eyes scanning over Dean’s face. “Why, you know her?”

Sam and Dean nod in unison.

“Her dad and our dad were friends—sort of. I mean, her dad used to drop her off with us whenever they went hunting together. She was a year younger than me and a terrible influence,” Sam reminisces. “Our dad always got so mad whenever they’d get back because she’d always get us in trouble but he couldn’t stay mad at her for long. She was really good at pretending to be innocent and sweet.”

“Yeah,” Dean grumbles, glaring at Sam as he hoists himself up into a chair, “and I almost always got in trouble, because Sammy always backed Y/N up. She’s like a fucking spider and Sam got caught up in her web, but goddamnit…” he sighs and leans across the table for the case folder Ash had compiled. “I got stuck in her web too. She  _ was _ a little heathen.”

Jo blinks at them. “That’s… I’ve never heard you speak better about someone.”

“Well, she’s basically my little sister… in law.” Dean grunts when Sam kicks him under the table. “Hey! Sorry,  _ ex _ -sister-in-law.”

Jo laughs, confused but knowing that what she’s watching is funny.

“Sammy here had a  _ crush _ ,” Dean sings. Sam kicks him again. “Ow! You’re a menace, Sammy.”

“Y/N never mentioned you two,” Jo says, frowning. You’d only ever talked about hunting and made empty, half-drunk, and not-remembered promises to take Jo hunting after she finished high school. Then, about four years ago, you’d stopped dropping by so frequently and never brought up hunting together again.

“See,” Dean points at her, “that’s why I say ‘ex’. Sam left to go to college and Y/N didn’t like that. She hasn't contacted us since. Hell hath no fury, right?”

“It’s not like that,” Sam mutters, embarrassed and red. “She’s my annoying little sister and she felt like I was abandoning her. Dean’s always been annoying about his fantasy about me liking Y/N. He wants her to be  _ really _ in the family. But anyway.” He grabs the case file out of Dean’s hands. “She’s missing?”

Jo nods. “I tried calling her a week ago and she hasn’t picked up since. I don’t know how long exactly she’s been missing, but Rufus and Bobby found her car and brought it back to Bobby’s.”

Sam swallows and Dean’s face goes somber.

“We should head over there, then,” Dean declares. “Maybe there’s a clue in her car about what happened to her.”

Sam nods but keeps his eyes glued to the picture Ash had used for your profile in the file. You’re older than he’d ever seen you in life. His chest aches when he thinks about how much of pure  _ you _ he’s missed out on for years. It’s crazy to how he saw you constantly as a kid and he doesn’t even know what you look like now.

And it was all for nothing. He’s hunting again, but without you in the backseat. And you’re missing.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Sam says suddenly, his eyes watering because of all the dust in the roadhouse, and nobody mentions his choked voice.

“Little sister my ass,” is all Jo mutters as her eyes follow the boys out.

* * *

 

_ Sandwiched between two boys both six inches taller than you, fifteen-year-old you leans back on the couch and pouts as both fathers lecture the three of you. _

_ “Dean, you’re twenty years old,” John scolds. “You should know better than to help Y/N and Sam sneak into an amusement park!” _

_ “We just wanted to see if we could,” Sam protests. Your dad crosses his arms. _

_ “Yeah, and if you all got caught? You would all get arrested.” _

_ “We had a fake story all planned out!” you pipe up indignantly. “Dean had a fake I.D. and everything! Besides, we just would’ve broken out.” _

_ “Put a finger to your lips, Y/N!” your father barks. “You are in deep, deep trouble.” _

_ “Nothing even happened!” you snap back, clenching your jaw and narrowing your eyes slightly. _

_ “John and I came home and we didn’t know where you were! There was no way for us to find you!” _

_ “You never tell me where you’re hunting!” _

_ “What if there had been a monster at Kings Dominion?” Your dad’s face is starting to turn red, as is yours. _

_ “Y/N,” Sam mutters at your side and you very deliberately plant your hands on the couch and lift your butt so you move away from him. Sam falls silent as if struck dumb. _

_ You like to run the show whenever you’re with the Winchester boys and do not like it when they back someone else over you. It may be a little childish and petty, but you’ll be petty when you can. Almost every other aspect of your life requires you to be generous and self-sacrificing. _

_ “We had our weapons,” you reply to your dad, ignoring Sam. Your voice is suddenly cool and aloof. It’s your way to assert dominance—acting like you’re above everyone and you couldn’t care less about them. “We’re allowed to have fun sometimes.” _

_ “Not dangerous fun,” your dad mutters, beginning to cool down as you freeze. He can’t stay mad at you for long. None of them can. _

_ “All fun is dangerous,” Dean butts in but raises his hands in surrender when your dad glares at him. “Never mind.” _

_ “Coward,” you mumble under your breath and Dean jabs you in the side with his ebow. You squeal and fall into Sam’s lap. Your dads roll their eyes and the past is behind you all, even though everyone knows you’ll come up with another crazy idea the boys will follow you into executing soon. _

_ Sam sticks a finger into your side and you twist away from him, too, pink from laughter or embarrassment or something else you’ve decided to ignore so it’ll go away staining your cheeks and making your ears hot. _

_ Your elbow hits Sam in the gut and he groans. Dean laughs and then grunts when Sam hits him lightly on the shoulder. _

_ “Oh, it is on,” Dean growls and lunges at his younger brother. You scoot away from the fight you’d started and laugh as the brothers tussle. _

_ Even while fighting, Sam’s ears recognize your laugh and he blushes at the thought of you watching him play fight with Dean. _

_ “Hey, Sammy,” Dean whispers while Sam has him pinned, “your pathetic puppy-love crush is super obvious.” _

* * *

“Hello?” Dean waves his hand in front of Sam’s nose. His little brother is staring out the window with no expression on his face and vacant eyes. “Earth to Sammy?” He snaps again and Sam blinks, disoriented, before shoving Dean’s hand away from his face. “Where’d you go?” Dean inquires, switching his gaze back to the flat expanse of pavement Baby’s cruising along.

Sam clears his throat and replies, “Just...  lost in thought,” deliberately avoiding the question.

Dean can tell that immediately, obviously, but he doesn’t question his brother. “Okay.”

The silence between them lasts only ten seconds before Sam angles his body in Dean’s direction and says, “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

Sam furrows his eyebrows. “Why’d Y/N never contact you? Me, I get… sort of. But you’d think she’d still want to keep in touch with you.”

“It’s like I always said, Sammy,” Dean grins, “Y/N was only using me to get to you.” He chuckles.

Sam rolls his eyes. The idea of him having a crush on Y/N is laughable, but not even a love potion could get you to like him in any way other than as a brother. Which doesn’t make Sam’s stomach churn. It was the roadhouse food, for sure—Jo and Ellen are great, but the food they serve is just as good as any other roadhouse’s food—which is to say, terrible.

“Nah, I’m joking. We all know I was her favorite, at least until she started blushing at the mere mention of you.”

Sam shakes his head.

Dean shrugs. “Fine, believe what you want to believe, it’s your loss. We both know Y/N would never make the first move if she actually liked a guy. If you don’t accept your feelings she’s gonna move on eventually. If she hasn’t alrea—”

“Look, you’re not my relationship counselor or whatever,” Sam interrupts. “Please stop with all that crap.”

The elder brother sighs. “You know full well Y/N’s spotty with her comms. I guess she was so mad at you she got mad at me because we’re brothers or some weird excuse—so thanks for being such a humongous dick my baby sister hated me, by the way—and I didn’t call her and she didn’t call me. At first she was probably just mad but then she probably got anxious and then I got a new number because my phone got smashed, so I wouldn’t be able to answer any of her calls if she did call me and then she would probably think that I hated her for disconnecting my number so…” Dean heaves a sigh and shrugs again. “You left me with a heaping pile of shit, man. And you broke her heart. I don’t care if you think Y/N loved you romantically or platonically, she felt abandoned by you.”

Sam stares at his lap. “I know Y/N can hold grudges, but still. That’s pretty extreme.”

“You give her too much credit, man,” Dean replies. “Y/N isn’t good with emotions that aren’t anger or happiness, so she just changes all the other ones to those two. You know her mom was shit, plus she’s a hunter… I’m not surprised she reacted like that. Hell,  _ we’re _ better adjusted than her and you know what Dad was like.”

Sam shifts in his seat. “She’s pretty good, Dean.”

“Yeah, she is.” Dean looks at his brother out of the corner of his eye. “We helped. You, especially, what with your desire to turn our life into a chick flick.”

Sam laughs, not because it was especially funny, but to break the tension, and after a pause Dean gives a chuckle too. “Nothing could turn our life into a chick flick.”

“Maybe an action-slash-romance after you save her,” Dean muses.

Sam shoves him.

* * *

 

Sam goes to search your car while Dean passes out in one of Bobby’s spare rooms. He’d wanted to come along too, but a full night of driving had him struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Her keys were in the ignition,” Bobby says while unlocking the car with said keys. “Rufus and I cleared out the trash in the back and washed the laundry, which I put into the trunk. I doubt you’ll be able to find anything we didn’t. I know all Y/N’s tricks. Good luck, though, boy.” He pats Sam on the shoulder and leaves him with your small Prius. Dean had always hated it because of its boringness, and you’d always responded by predicting his unusual car be the thing that helps cops track him down, if cops were ever on his ass.

“My car is normal and small,” you’d always said. “Nobody will ever notice it, and I don’t have a Bigfoot brother to lug around.”

“And you’re too small to see the road when you’re driving bigger cars,” Sam always teased, grinning, and you’d always gone a bit red and aimed a kick at his shin.

Sam has to crouch to start feeling around in your car, but one accidental brush against a hot seatbelt buckle makes him hiss and flinch away.

When Dean comes out, all four of the doors of your car are opened and Sam’s ass is sticking in the air as he feels around the car in the driver’s area. There’s got to be a hidden compartment somewhere, if Sam knows— _ knew _ you.

Maybe you changed.

Dean’s voice shakes that thought from Sam’s mind as he says, “Wow, this really brings back memories, doesn’t it?”

“Not really,” Sam’s about to say, because you’d only had the car for two months before he left for Stanford and whenever the three of you hunted together you always traveled in the Impala, but Dean continues to talk.

“Remember when I got stabbed by a vamp and had to lie in the backseat but there wasn’t enough room?”

“I do not remember that,” Sam replies. He can’t even imagine the three of you in that car together. He and Dean are just too big.

The humor slides right off Dean’s face. “Oh, yeah,” he says flatly and turns around.

“What’s the sudden attitude about?” Sam asks.

“You didn’t go with us on that hunt because you were too busy watching the mail and, more importantly, making sure Dad wouldn’t find your Stanford letter. Remember?” Dean leans against the car’s opposite side. “We got patched up, came through the door, Y/N said something about all hunting together, and you just blurted out, ‘I’m leaving you guys’.”

Sam sighs and gives up on the search momentarily, standing up to glare at his brother. “Dude, you gotta stop guilt-tripping me about leaving for college. I get that you were hurt by my decision, but it’s just that—my decision.”

“I’m not getting into this argument with you,” Dean mutters and crouches down to search through the car as well.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Dean—”

“Aha!” Dean holds up a box that he’d pulled from somewhere, but Sam had checked that side twice and found nothing. Where could you have hid a box about half the length of a pillow where Sam, Bobby, and Rufus wouldn’t have found it?

“Where’d you—”

“Me and Y/N hollowed out the passenger seat a bit and stuck this box inside for her to hide stuff. It’s where she keeps her journal, mostly, so maybe that’ll help us figure out when and where she went missing. We invited you to help, but you needed to study.”

“Dude.” Sam stands up and slams the driver’s door shut. “ _ Stop, _ okay? I get it. I left. I’m back now, aren’t I?”

“Just wait until we find Y/N,” Dean says. “If you think I’m being bad or annoying about how you abandoned us and, if it was up to you, Yellow-Eyes would be running rampant and killing people’s moms.”

“I’m sure I’ll get it bad from Y/N!” Sam replies. “But you can’t hold that against me for the rest of my life, okay?”

“You’re right,” Dean concedes. Sam’s mouth barely has enough time to quirk up before he adds, “I’m sure you’ll do something else I can get pissed at you for doing sometime in the future.”

Sam rolls his eyes and turns back to the house.

“Well, you are my younger brother!” Dean yells at his retreating back. “I’m always gonna be on your case about  _ something _ !”

“Idjits,” Bobby mutters and Dean takes the box from Sam, which is much lighter than it looks (and should be, Dean’s brain says, but you might have gotten a new, smaller journal after filling up your first one, and used the burner phone without getting a new one, and put the photo album somewhere else in the car) and sets it on the table.

He pats his pockets up and down until the zip-up one on his left leg yields results. A relatively new-looking silver key glints in the light as he puts it in the lock and turns.

There’s nothing in the box.

“Did you find anything apart from the trash, clothes, and weapons?” Dean asks.

Bobby shakes his head.

* * *

 

The boys scour your car for three straight hours but come up with nada again. Sam hit every square inch of the car’s interior to knock loose any secret compartments. Dean cuts open every seat for more hidden boxes, reminding himself to just buy you a better car. His little sister won’t be driving around in a  _ Prius. _

Bobby even looks at the interior and exterior of the car with a blacklight on the off chance you’d left a message in invisible ink.

There’s absolutely nothing.

“I wanna key this car so bad,” Dean finally grumbles when they all give up.

“Y/N’s already gonna be pissed about her seats,” Sam points out. He wouldn’t stop Dean if he did, though. He’s just as frustrated as his brother, and also exhausted. He has to run a hand through his hair to get it away from his forehead to cool down a bit. “Hey, Dean?”

“Hmm?”

“How come you had a key to Y/N’s box?”

“We got them driving home on the night you left,” Dean starts.

“Shit, did you and Y/N decide to do  _ everything _ in the few days before I left? God _ damn _ it.” Sam has to stare up at the sky and count to three before gritting out, “Sorry. I’m just annoyed by your constant guilt trips and anxious about Y/N. By all means, continue and make me feel even worse, please.”

Dean leans against the car and closes his eyes. “You know perfectly well Y/N was always doing fifty million things at once. It was just convenient, what with how we had recently made the box but Y/N wanted a lock on it, and we saw a place for that at the Walmart we stopped at for snacks. She got three.”

Sam exhales sharply and closes his eyes as well. Both brothers lean against the car with no clues, the sun just starting to set. Without opening his eyes, Sam asks, sounding like someone is twisting his arm, “Is it too forward of me to assume the third key was to be mine?”

“Nah, it was,” Dean replies. His eyes burn.

“Great,” is all Sam mutters. Dean heras him walk away but can’t bear to watch him do it. He doesn’t know where one of his siblings is, and the one that’s walking away from him now is the one that always walks away. The one that never walks away walked away from him too.

After a while Dean remembers to put the empty box back in your car. It seems like too much hassle to put it back inside the seat correctly, so Dean opens up the trunk to set it inside. The trunk doesn’t close fully when he tries to, even when Dean slams it, so he shoves some knives away from the space he wants it to go in. One knife slips under the carpet bottom of the trunk, even though there shouldn’t be a slit in the fabric there. You’d probably torn it while tossing weapons in after a hunt.

Dean lifts up the flap to retrieve the knife and his mouth drops open.

* * *

 

“But if she didn’t want anyone to find them, Y/N would’ve put them in the hidden box that only she and you can open!” Sam argues.

“Maybe someone else knew about the box or had the key? There’s not a lot of other possible scenarios, Sam. A monster would’ve just dumped the whole book instead. Why take the trouble of taking every picture out of its page and putting them in the trunk of her car? Y/N obviously wanted to keep them safe.”

Bobby ignores the bickering brothers and sorts through each of the pictures separately. They’re the Polaroids that print immediately. Your dad gotten you one of those cameras because they were easier to use than trying to go through the whole printing process at, like, a Costco or whatever.

One picture is of Bobby cleaning out one of his guns, another a sopping-wet Sam next to a grinning Dean. There’s one of the dog you and Sam had had for a week when you’d run away as kids.

A few feature a man who looks almost sickly-thin next to a smiling version of you Bobby hardly recognizes: you, a full adult now, without Sam or Dean by your side to make you look small, new slashes on your body from hunting.

Bobby’s seen you maybe twice in the last four years. He’ll be sure to rip you a new one when the boys come home for being so immature about your feelings being hurt.

Bobby was your second father, just like he was to Sam and Dean, but maybe, because of how little you saw your dad, Bobby was more your primary father.

And you called, sure, sometimes, but you could never be bothered to show up and visit for fear of Dean being there.

“How did I raise such a dumbass?” Bobby asks himself, his beard twitching as he smiles. If you’re dead, he’s going to kill you.

The Winchester brothers look away from each other angrily, unable to keep the conversation from going in circles. Dean storms off to get a beer and Sam sits down next to Bobby.

“There’s a lot of her and that one guy,” he notices, pointing to the pile Bobby had made.

“Yeah, she and Garth were hunting together before they both dropped off the comms,” Bobby answers his unasked question. “He’s a good guy. I don’t think he’s her type, though.”

Sam wants to ask Bobby what he thinks your type is, but he bites his tongue. He doesn’t get to be interested after leaving, and anyway, he’s not even interested. You’re his little sister.

“How about this,” Bobby says loudly so Dean, who’s sulking in the other room, hears him too, “we all go to bed. Tomorrow, we clear out Y/N’s trunk to see if there are any other pictures or clues hidden in it, all right?”

“Whatever,” Dean grumbles from the kitchen, not even bothering to pretend he wasn’t he listening. Sam hears him open and close the fridge, probably to put back his beer, and then the heavy sound of Dean stomping to the bedroom he always sleeps in.

Bobby stands up as well. “Sam? You coming?”

“In a sec,” Sam replies distractedly. They both know it’s a lie.

“Make sure you sleep soon,” is all Bobby says before he, too, turns away.

Then it’s just Sam and the pictures. Pictures of his maybe-dead little sister hanging out with people he doesn’t know.

The don’t capture you, at least not exactly. The photographer was too far away or the camera’s too shitty, but your eyes look like only one color instead of the thousand flecks Sam knows better than anyone else’s eyes. Your skin looks paler than he remembers and the wrinkles on your forehead aren’t captured either.

Or maybe Sam doesn’t recognize you because it’s been four years. Maybe the creases on your forehead have smoothed without Sam and Dean at your side. Maybe you’ve spent less time outdoors. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Sam rubs his hand together. If Stanford taught him anything, it taught him to never act solely on your emotions. Be analytical. Investigate every path you can find.

Well, Sam’s going to investigate this path. He doubts he’ll be able to find anything, looking through these pictures, other than an immense feeling of loneliness, but you’re gone. Sam’s going to find you.

He’s already wasted four years pretending you’re still around.

(Maybe he doesn’t recognize you because you’re not with him and Dean. Maybe he’s never met a Y/N that hasn’t been a Winchester.)

* * *

 

Bobby’s surprised when Sam’s not still up in the morning. Obviously it had taken him more than ‘a sec’ in getting to bed, though, because all of the small photographs have been lined up in a small block of orderly rows. Three empty beer bottles stand on top of three, completely covering them.

Bobby frowns and crouches down to move the bottles. The pictures Sam had deliberately covered up are a bit wrinkly from the bottle’s condensation soaking into them but they’re not ruined. Bobby can clearly see the subjects of the photos, and they’re all the same: you and a boy with tousled dark brown hair. In the first, the boy is kissing your cheek as he hugs you. In the second, you and the boy are sleeping in the same bed, lax bodies curved towards each other though you sleep on the far sides of the bed. The third picture is blurry. The boy’s form is easy to make out, only his arm blurry, and you’re a blur as you spin around. You’re dancing with him.

Bobby remembers, once, Sam had twirled you around and round in this room. You’d giggled and moved on to Dean, but Bobby had watched Sam’s face.

His emotions were written on it clear as day.

“Whoa,” Dean says as he enters the room, the beer from last night already in his hand. “Sam went OCD, huh?”

“They look to be in chronological order.” Bobby takes the beer from Dean, silencing his protests with a stern look, and stows it back in the fridge. “I’ve got eggs, bacon, and waffles. That sound good to you, boy?”

“Sounds great!” Dean smiles at Bobby. “I mean, you just put my regular breakfast in the fridge, so. That sounds awesome.”

Bobby frowns while pulling the frozen waffles out of his freezer. “Shouldn’t Sam be taking better care of you?”

“What, are you kidding?” Dean snorts. “Kid can barely handle himself. Half the time he would forget Y/N wasn’t in the backseat.”

“Huh.”

The two men share a look but decided against any further commentary. Sam might be awake and listening. Plus, breakfast needs to get eaten quickly so the case can resume. Dean doesn’t think he’d be able to forgive himself if they find you and all the other hunters, only you’re freshly dead, and him eating waffles for breakfast—having any breakfast at all, really—was what slowed him down just enough he couldn’t save you.

Dean leaves Bobby to his cooking and goes back to the living room. Considering how hectic and disorganized the rest of the room is, the pictures on the ground almost blend in.

Dean flips over a picture of you and a dog. The date it was taken is scrawled on the back, and your familiar handwriting knocks the air out of Dean’s lungs. He hasn’t had anything of yours for the last four years, save five pictures on his phone he knows by heart. If he had known how soon you were going to leave after they were taken, Dean would have taken a lot more.

Handwriting Dean both barely and clearly remembers is scrawled on the backs of most of the pictures.

“So Sammy hadn’t been doing it all on guesswork,” Dean muses. “Huh.”

Your alien face scares Dean. It’s one he used to know well, one he thought he would know forever. It’s in almost all of the pictures, whether you be hugging a dog, leaning against a car with a scared-looking little girl clutching at your leg, or the only person swimming in a dark lake.

“We’ll let Sam sleep,” Bobby says from the doorway. “Losing two people you love so quickly can be rough. Come and eat.”

“Y/N’s done well with herself,” Dean remarks with a mouth full of scrambled egg. “She’s got two hunting partners, one of which is her boyfriend. I guess she’s even got a dog.” Never mind that Dean had always thought your two partners would be him and Sam, and your boyfriend would be Sam instead of a shaggy stranger.

“Weird choice of pet for a hunter.”

“Weird for a hunter to have a pet at all,” Dean counters and frowns. “Bobby…” He sets down his fork and locks eyes with him. “What you said, about Sam losing two people he loves… you don’t think Y/N is dead, do you?”

Bobby shakes his head. “Y/N’s a fighter, and in her prime. I’m sure she’s fine. What I was talking about was losing Y/N to that boy she’s with now.”

Dean scowls. “Hey, Sam was the one that left us. He couldn’t seriously think we’d wait our whole lives for him, especially after he said he wasn’t coming back.”

“I’m not blaming anyone,” Bobby interrupts, glaring at Dean. “Personally, I think you all were in the wrong.”

The face Dean makes tells it all.

“Sam, for leaving the way he did,” Bobby explains. “Y/N, for leaving, too, and ignoring us for four years. And you, for not trying to broker peace between your brother and father. Sam goes to college and the rest of the family breaks up too, is that it? You’re going to lose people in this line of work and you can’t break up every time that happens, because shit like  _ this _ will happen.”

Dean drops his fork and stands up. “I’m going to search Y/N’s trunk."

“Dean,” Bobby calls, exasperated, after his retreating back. “Boy!”

He doesn’t turn around.

Dean sweeps the mess of weapons out of your trunk carelessly, hardly registering the clatter as they hit the ground, and yanks the carpet out. Two little pictures come with it and drift to the ground while three polaroids wedged partly behind the far right corner stay. You’d obviously hidden them on purpose, maybe from whoever took you.

It’s hard to get them out without ripping them completely, and one of the corners of the first picture tears off, but Dean can be patient sometimes.

The top picture is one Dean remembers taking. It features you and Sam sleeping on a couch together, his arm thrown over your waist casually and your feet tangled together. You’d written the date on the back like the other pictures.

The second one doesn’t have a date, and it’s blurry. It looks to be a lit up sign of a store or something, which is useless.

The third picture you’d hidden is just as useless. It’s a picture of a hotel door labeled 20.

The two pictures that had fallen to the ground fit more in the theme of your other pictures: one of that dog, a German shepherd, with snow on his nose, and another of you with someone you’d saved: a little boy with rope burns on his wrists with a name Dean assumes is his on the back.

“All right, so there’s nothing in the pictures,” Dean mutters aloud. He still pockets the three hidden pictures, though. “Let’s try the weapons.”

The only thing Dean discovers is that you like to label your knives by writing what they are on a piece of tape and sticking the tape on the weapon’s handle. You’ve got knives dipped in virgin’s blood (Dean makes a mental note to tease you by asking if it’s your blood), brass, silver, and bronze knives, and one labeled ‘Demon’ that looks to be made out of bone. Dean’s not sure what that’s supposed to mean because you can’t kill demons with knives; you can’t kill demons at all—maybe it’s one that exorcises it immediately?

He just keeps getting more impressed by your arsenal. You have darts filled with Dead Man’s Blood, bullets made out of every metal, and even bullets with Devil’s traps carved onto them.

With all these weapons at your disposal, how could you have been taken? What if they’re walking into something they’re not prepared for?

* * *

 

Sam wakes up at one in the afternoon.

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Bobby says when he sees him conscious, albeit bleary-eyed and with hair that looks like he just walked through a tornado because of all his tossing and turning during the night.

Sam huffs out a half-laugh and rolls his eyes.

“Dean’s looking through Y/N’s trunk,” Bobby adds. “But if you’re hungry, there’s food.”

Sam shakes his head and hurries out to the car, mentally berating himself for sleeping in so long. You need help, damnit.

“What did you find?”

Dean spins around. Sam doesn’t miss the hand that automatically flies to his right jacket pocket. “Just three—two! Two pictures I’m pretty sure Y/N intentionally hid because of where they were in the trunk, and a Girl Scout-level of weapons.” When Sam doesn’t get it, Dean elaborates, “She’s prepared for everything. Some of these things I don’t even know what she could use them for.”

“Huh.” Sam kneels and picks up the knife you’d labeled ‘Demon’. “I don’t think Y/N’ll be too happy about the mess you made of her car.”

“She’s getting a new one anyway.” Dean hands Sam the pictures of the neon sign and hotel door labeled 20.

“Maybe they’re clues?” Sam suggests. “She doesn’t usually take pictures of stuff like this.”

Dean shrugs. “It’s either that or she took them on accident but then she would’ve just thrown them away, so I’m betting that’s what it is.”

“All right.” Sam shoves them into his pocket.

“Oh! I almost forgot.” Dean grins sheepishly at his younger brother, just now remembering the photos of the dog and you and the boy. The picture he’d wanted to hide from Sam—the one of you and him—comes out as well, and Dean tries to act nonchalant about putting it back in his pocket. “But these look normal.”

Sam flips over the one of you and the boy. “Dennis Walker, July 2006. And nothing on the picture of the dog, as usual. I wonder why she hasn’t said anything about the dog or…” he trails off, a shadow falling over his features, and Dean doesn’t know how to feel about the pain on his baby brother’s face. Maybe he deserves to be in pain for how he’d treated you, treated them all, but Dean also doesn’t want Sam to be in pain.

“Her partners?” Dean suggests as a less painful alternative to ‘boyfriend’. “I don’t know. It’s Y/N, man. You can’t understand her.”

“I used to,” Sam mutters. Dean pretends not to hear.  _ It’s his fault. _

“I’ll see if these mean anything,” Sam says, half-turning around before jerking to a stop. “What’s the third picture you don’t want to show me?”

“Huh?” Dean laughs nervously. “It’s really nothing. Just another picture of that dog—”

“Then show it to me.” Sam tilts his head and shifts his feet. “What, it’s not a picture of her having sex with that new boy, is it?” He means it as a joke but realizes as the words leave his mouth that he really wants to know the answer to that question.

“It’s nothing, Sammy.”

“Then why did Y/N hide it and why are  _ you _ hiding it? If we’re going to—”

Dean starts to walk inside and Sam splutters, “Dean! I need all the information—”

Without turning around, Dean says, “ _ Drop it, _ Sammy.”

Sam grabs his shoulder and whirls him around. “Dammit, Dean, just show me it!”

“It’s not important!”

“If you and Y/N both felt the need to hide it, then—”

“Fine!” Dean fishes the pictures out of his pocket and rifles through them. He shoves it at Sam, who almost tears it with his mixed annoyance and curiosity when he grabs it.

Dean almost blinks and misses the grief Sam works too hard to mask at the reminder of how things used to be, of better times.

“She hid it?”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t chuck it, though.”

“Sammy—”

Sam angrily drags his sleeve over his eyes. “Let’s just find her, Dean.”

“Hey, you wanted to see it.”

“Shut up. Is Bobby ready to drive?”

“Yeah. We were waiting on you. The town she disappeared in is only five hours away, so get ready. I’ll pack our stuff.”

“I’ll get Y/N’s stuff.”

Dean pretends to look through his pockets until his brother’s gone inside, and then he hurries back to your car. He has a weird feeling about your odd knife.

After a moment of hesitation, he pockets it. As a hunter, you should always trust your gut, and his gut is telling him the knife fits into all of this… somehow.

* * *

 

“Could you stop with the pictures?” Dean finally snaps when Sam starts to rifle through the large stack for the third time. “None of them are going to change anytime soon.”

“A lot are missing,” Sam replies, frowning. “There’s at most six in here of us, but I specifically remember Y/N taking so many more of us.”

“They were probably in the photo album,” Dean suggests. “The one she either tossed or lost.”

“Just like her notebook,” Sam murmurs. “Doesn’t this feel weird to you, Dean?”

“Well, yeah, but what do  _ you _ think is weird, Mr. College?”

Sam shoots his brother a side-eyed glare but decides not to rise to the bait. “Hunters dropping off the grid all over the place—like, maybe all in one town, sure, but Rufus’s been finding trucks all over. And there’s no sign of a struggle in here but Y/N’s gone and so are all her pictures of us, yet whoever took her didn’t take her weapons.” Sam sighs. “It’s just  _ weird _ .”

“Sammy, we hunt monsters. There’s no such as weird for us.”

“This is,” Sam insists. “This feels big.”

“Sure.” Dean glances at his brother and sighs exaggeratedly. “Fine, Sam, if you think this is so ‘big’, what do you propose we do about it? What does your prophecy change, exactly? Let’s go with the facts instead of what this  _ feels _ like.” He knows he’s being a total hypocrite, considering he stole one of your knives because he felt that it was important, but Sam’s emotions are more messed up because of this case than Dean’s.

“Don’t be such a jerk.”

“Then stop being a bitch,” Dean retorts, a small smile on his face, and he grins wider when he turns up his music and Sam rolls his eyes. There’s still too many things left unsaid between them that’ll probably never get said, but they’ll get through this like how they get through everything.

They’ll have you back soon, too, and then things will get even more back to normal.

Or maybe it won’t.

The grin slides off Dean’s face. Maybe you still won’t want anything to do with them. Maybe you’ll say that you’ve moved on. Maybe you won’t want to leave your new partners.

Dean’s cell phone rings and he answers it immediately, mindful of the way Sam’s eyelashes are fluttering and the hands he’s using to prop his chin up as he looks out the window.

“Yeah?”

Bobby’s voice growls, “Drive faster, ya idjit!” before he promptly hangs up.

Dean chuckles and presses harder on the gas pedal.

* * *

 

Dean and Bobby check in with each other just before entering the small town you’d disappeared in. Sam had fallen asleep minutes after Bobby had told him to hurry up and started snoring soon after. If Dean was more of a jackass he would’ve cranked his music up or woken him, but even though they’ve been fighting lately, he still cares about his little brother. Even if his brother is, has been, and always will be an idiot.

Bobby peers into the Impala to check on Sam before walking around to where Dean’s standing, one hand over the mysterious knife you’d labeled ‘Demon’ in his jacket pocket. Bobby eyes the odd placement of Dean’s hand but decides against commentary. He trusts Dean, except for when he’s being an idjit.

“He’s really taking this hard.”

Dean shoves his hands into his pockets and hunches his shoulders. “You weren’t there the night he left, Bobby. They both said some really nasty things, and now Y/N’s missing. Plus, he loves her. Loved her. You can’t really tell with Sam.”

“Yeah, you can, but enough sappy talk.” Bobby holds out a hand and Dean places the two mystery pictures of yours. “I’ll find the motel that labels their rooms like that and then figure out what place Y/N was trying to take a picture of. You and Sam—”

“We’re gonna ask around, see if anyone’s seen anything strange.” Dean nods and takes a step back to the Impala. “You call when you’ve located the room. Sam and I will check it out so you don’t have to.”

“Why, you think I’m too old for some recon?” Bobby growls.

“I wanna get both of these places identified, that’s all,” Dean almost yelps. “Thanks, Bobby!” He practically throws himself into his car and slams the door so hard behind him that Sam wakes up with a jump, looking around wildly before he gains his bearings.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean teases, which is probably a joke he and Bobby use too much. “We’re here. Pretty much. We’ve got, like, thirty seconds more to drive.”

Sam rubs the sleep out of his eyes and sits up straight. “Why’d we stop?”

“Bobby had to go over our game plan and we didn’t want to interrupt your beauty sleep.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “So what’s the plan, then?”

“You and I,” Dean starts, tossing Sam a FBI badge so he knows the name on it, “are going to ask around for our friend. We’re from the FBI but here because we’re personally looking for Y/N, not officially.”

The Impala rolls past the town’s ‘Welcome’ sign. Underneath the ‘welcome’ is one of those corny phrases you hear in commercials: ‘Where your kids come home’. Sam huffs at that, wondering just how many kids hate their circumstances just like he’d hated growing up in a car and hunting the nightmares people hope are fake.

“Okay, hottest girl we see, let’s see who can get her number,” Dean challenges, his head on a swivel as he looks for anyone that looks suspicious.

Sam follows his lead. Everybody looks pretty normal and like they’re not paying attention to the hunters. By chance, his eyes meet someone’s in the passenger mirror, but they slide away before Sam fully realizes what had happened. He’s almost positive he just saw your boyfriend in the mirror, but when he turns around, there’s no one resembling him.

“What’s up?” Dean asks, also looking back like he’ll see something off.

“Nothing, I just—my eyes playing tricks on me, I guess,” Sam replies, settling back into his seat and slapping his brother’s shoulder. “Eyes on the road, Dean. I just think I’m still tired.”

“That, little brother, is why we don’t drink to forget the ones that get away,” Dean says wisely. “We always remember.”

“Shut up,” Sam replies, and pushes him. “I don’t know how many times I have to say this: I think of Y/N as a little sister. Nothing more.”

“Yeah, and I went to Stanford,” Dean says in such a serious voice that Sam stares at him. “I thought we were describing each other!”

“You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

“You’re just a bitch.”

“Hey, did you tell Bobby to go to the first motel in the phone book first?” Sam checks, only just having remembered the system you had used when you hunted with them.

“Yep, and if the labeling mathes we’re gonna ask the desk about Harriet Mills, presumably in room 20.” Dean gives a half-laugh as Bobby pulls into the parking lot of a motel in front of them. “Dude, I’m not the rusty one.”

Sam purses his lips and begins to drum his fingers on his seat. “So are you taking us to a grocery store or bar?”

“As much as I’d love to grab a beer right now,” Dean sighs, “Y/N was more likely to have visited a drugstore for Ibuprofen and chips than a bar for alcohol.”

“You always were disappointed she’d practically sworn off alcohol,” Sam says softly, smiling wistfully. “You always teased her about it, and she’d always tease you about the latest crazy stunt you’d pulled while drunk. You remember when you peed in a motel’s closet and made a bed out of your dirty laundry?” Sam chuckles. “Classic.”

“Look, all I’m saying is that she’s a little too uptight, you know? Nothing wrong with getting drunk every so often.”

“Except the utter humiliation and shame I’d make you feel,” Sam says.

“Sammy, you’re so considerate,” Dean says sarcastically while pulling into the parking lot of the first grocery store he sees. “And totally not part of the reason why Y/N doesn’t drink. All right, you ready to rock n’ roll?”

“Which picture are we using again?”

Dean holds out a picture of you smiling and leaning against your car with that dog next to you. “This one is good, right?”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah, that’s fine.” He doesn’t move when Dean opens his door.

“Huh. Well, I’m glad it pleases you, Mr. Stanford,” Dean snarks. “Now are we going or sulking in the car all day?”

“Jerk,” Sam says, opening up his door with more aggression than necessary.

“Bitch.”

They stride inside the girl behind the register obviously looks Dean up and down and he flashes a cocky grin at her. Sam rolls his eyes but trails after his brother.

“Hey,” Dean says, leaning against the counter.

“Hi,” she responds. “How can I help you?”

“Yes, um, Shelly?” Dean says, reading her nametag. “I was just wondering if you had seen this girl anywhere?” He hands her the small picture. “That’s our little sister. She was on a road trip and last we heard from her she was in this town.”

“Oh, no,” Shelly gasps. “That’s awful.”

Sam shrugs but no one notices him. As usual, he’s pushed into the limelight. One good thing about you was that you never really favored one brother over the other. Too bad you’re missing. Sam would love to be able to exchange looks with you behind Dean’s back.

“That’s so sweet that you drove all the way out here to find your sister,” Shelly gushes. Dean shrugs and smiles.

“So, um, have you seen her?” Sam butts in. Shelly and Dean both shoot him matching glares but he can’t be bothered to care. Dean’s apparently forgotten that you’re missing and could even be dead. Sam hasn’t.

“Um, yeah, maybe,” the cashier snaps. “I think I saw her at the Silver Diner with two other men. I thought it was weird because one of them was pretty old and the other was, like, way out of her league.”

Sam snorts and turns away. If Shelly had seen you with your boyfriend and other hunting partner, then she was dead wrong: you are so out of your boyfriend’s league it’s crazy. And even if it hadn’t been them, you still would have been out of anyone’s league. You’re, like, perfect.

Dean thanks the cashier, his voice significantly cooler.

“Come on, Sam,” he mutters and tugs him by the sleeve out the door. “There’s only trash in there anyways.”

“So, a Silver Diner with two other men,” Sam says, deciding not to say anything about the cashier’s comment because it’ll make him even angrier. “I bet it’s that Garth dude and that boy.”

Apparently too angry about the cashier too, Dean doesn’t even make a biting comment about how he’s actually boy _ friend _ and instead just grunts in what Sam takes to be agreement.”

Before they can get into the Impala, Dean’s phone rings. He flips it open. “Bobby? Yeah. Okay, we’re on our way.” He ends the call. “So the first motel was a hit. ‘Harriet Mills’ had actually checked in to room 32, so I’m assuming something else happened in room 20.”

“Or maybe she was in a hurry and just needed to leave any clue so she took a picture of the numbering,” Sam points out. “It led us to the motel either way.”

“Well, I suppose we’ll figure it out, then,” Dean says, and off they speed in the Impala.

* * *

 

“Here they are,” Bobby says when they walk through the door. “My associates,” he adds. The brothers take the hint and immediately reach for an FBI badge. They don’t even have them out before the receptionist starts to yell.

“I don’t care if you’re FBI or what! You’re going to pay for your damages or… or I’m calling the cops!”

They all would be amused by that ineffectual threat except for the fact that this receptionist that they’ve never seen in their lives apparently knows them and has a bone to pick with them.

“Calm down, buddy,” Dean says, stowing his badge. “Why don’t you tell us what you’re talking about, all right?”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t remember!” the weaselly little man yells, pointing a finger at him like he’s lecturing him. “You two scumbags come in here just a few weeks ago and check out room 20!”

Sam and Dean look at each other, but the receptionist isn’t done.

“All I know is that you two go out for dinner and come back with a girl, and the next morning the room is trashed and all three of you have vanished!”

All three hunters are stumped. As Dean hands the receptionist a credit card to settle the cost of the repairs, Sam looks at the picture he has of you. Going on a crazy hunch, he asks, interrupting the conversation between his brother and the therapist, “Is this the girl we had with us?”

The receptionist looks at him like he’s crazy. “Shouldn’t you know?”

“Just answer the question,” Sam replies.

The man glances at the photo and nods. “Yep, that’s her. Harriet Mills. She came in with her brothers a week before you two. She must’ve been the first visitor we’ve had in a year. What, did she lead you scumbags here or somethin’? Were  you two following her? Did you kidnap her?” The excited receptionist hops up and down. “I should call the police on you!”

“Again, sir, we’re with the FBI,” Dean says, exchanging a dumbfounded look with Sam. The man visibly deflates. “We’re going to need to see room 20, as well as anything we might have left behind that you cleaned up.”

The receptionist glares sullenly at the three hunters, but, recognizing that he’s outnumbered in every way, hands over a key to the room.

“Do you have any security tapes of that night?” Bobby asks.

The man shakes his head. “They got wiped. I’m guessing,” he glares at Sam and Dean, “by you.”

Dean taps Sam’s shoulder. “That’s all you, bro. Bobby and I’re gonna go check out the room, ‘kay?”

It’s not terribly hard to retrieve the tapes. Somebody had deleted them and locked down a program that would allow them to be retrieved. It’s almost too easy to hack, and Sam keeps glancing over his shoulder like it’s a trap. It certainly feels like one.

Sam clicks on the tape for rooms 20 to 30 on the day he and Dean had apparently checked in at the motel. A few minutes after check-in time, he and Dean appear on the screen.

Sam’s heart starts to pound. Their eyes flash.

“Shifters,” he says out loud. “Why would shifters—”

“What did you say?” the receptionist asks eagerly.

Sam lifts his eyes from the computer’s screen. “Nothing.”

“What’s a shifter?” the receptionist presses.

“It’s code,” Sam says shortly. “And you don’t have enough clearance to know what it’s code for.” Maybe he’s still tired, or maybe he’s just worried about you, but this guy is really rubbing him the wrong way.

He speeds up the tape until he and Dean appear on the screen again. There’s someone with them, a girl with Y/H/H hair and Y/S/C skin. She turns around, probably to see if anyone’s watching, and reaches into the inside of her jacket. She doesn’t get the chance to take whatever it is out, because the shifter that looks like Dean sneaks up behind her and wraps his arms around her torso. The shifter that looks like Sam quickly ties her hands together.

The girl spits something at the fake Sam, who punches her in the face.

Sam stomach flips when the girl leans her head back and he can finally confirm that it’s you. You do know that that wasn’t Sam, right? Sam would never do that to you. Never.

He can only watch as his body reaches into the jacket pocket you’d been reaching for and pulls out a familiar notebook. It’s your hunting journal.

Sam rewinds the video, a faint hope making him blind to the situation. Maybe your eyes will shine on the recording too and Sam will stop feeling so queasy. He’d rather die than watch you get hurt by himself.

But he hadn’t died the last time you’d been hurt by him, had he? And that had actually been Sam, too. He’d savored every cutting word that came out of his mouth. He’d been so angry he’d relished the look on your face as he’d spit at you.

You’re making the same face in the tape as you had when Sam had left for Stanford.

So there’s not much difference, is there?

The fake Sam says one more thing to you. You spit in his face and he hits you so hard you’re knocked unconscious.

Sam can only watch as the shifters drag you away. Only minutes after you disappear, a man runs up to door 20 and takes a picture of it. Sam’s stomach drops. That’s… your boyfriend, isn’t it?

He’s barely left before the fake Sam and Dean come back. They both both look directly into the camera before going back into room 20.

Having seen all he needed to see, Sam deletes the video for real. When he stands up, the receptionist looks up quickly. “Did you find anything?”

“Uh, no,” Sam lies. “It was deleted completely.”

“Then why’d you say something about shifters?”

“They left their signature in the codings,” Sam quickly invents. “We’ve been tailing them for months.”

“What?”

“The people that trashed our room,” Sam explains, hoping his explanation is confusing the receptionist just enough that he won’t ask more questions. “They wiped the tape.”

The receptionist nods, looking a bit bewildered, and watches Sam as he leaves to go to his brother and Bobby.


	2. Losing

“Well, that gave us jack squat,” Dean grumbles, wiping his hands on his pockets as he and Bobby exit room 20. “I wonder why Y/N took a picture of the room, apart from the fact that Sam and I apparently checked it out a few days ago.”

“You got me, boy,” Bobby says. “If we rule out demonic possession, then that means you weren’t really here, so what was?”

“I don’t have any memory loss, so I’m pretty sure I wasn’t possessed,” Dean says. “What does that leave?”

“All I can think of is shifter,” Bobby answers. “Why would shifters want to look like you boys and trash up a room?”

“We brought Y/N to the room, apparently,” Dean remembers. “Maybe that’s how she got kidnapped. She thought they were me and Sam.”

“That’s sloppy.”

“And the room was trashed because Y/N found out they were shifters and tried to get away,” Dean realizes. “If Sam managed to get the tapes back, then he probably knows that already.”

“Does it normally take him this long to retrieve footage?” Bobby asks.

Dean shrugs. “Kid isn’t perfect.” He opens the door for Bobby to the staircase they can take back to the lobby. “Maybe the shifters know how to cover their tracks.” Their footsteps echo loudly as they jog down the stairs to pick up Sam.

“Sam, you ready to go?” Dean asks before he’s fully in the room.

The receptionist doesn’t look up from his computer. “Hmm?”

“Where’s Sam?” Deans asks, looking around the otherwise empty room as if Sam will pop out from behind a chair.

“Your partner?” the receptionist frowns. “He left to go find you.”

Dean bolts back up the stairs. “Sam?” he bellows. “Sammy?”

His brother doesn’t respond.

“Sam?”

* * *

 

The receptionist watches as the two hunters pretending to be FBI agents finally leave, the older one dragging the younger one out. The second their cars leave the parking lot, he dials the number of someone with the contact name ‘Susan’ on his phone. The person picks up right away.

“There are more hunters. You got the third one, right?”

“Yes.”

“I knew we should have made the security tapes more obvious. The Chief isn’t tech-savvy enough to do hardly anything with a computer, so our trap fell through.”

“We’ve got a few safety nets.”

“Yeah, and what about the dog?”

“They don’t know him and he doesn’t know them. “Stop worrying so much, David.”

The receptionist wearing a nametag with the name Michael takes a deep breath and nods. “You’re right. I think we’re about done in this town, though.”

“We’ll get the new deals sealed within two weeks.”

“I’ll see you later.”

The person he’d called flips her phone shut. The hunter she’d caught is still out cold, his feet and hands hog-tied together. His head lolls with every bump the van hits, his hair hiding his face.

The shifter climbs into the front seat of the van next to her colleague.

“Sam Winchester will get us such a profit,” she says. The face Sam and Dean have been studying only in photos wears a smirk as she looks over at the shifter wearing Dean Winchester’s face. Your eyes look back at Sam’s unconscious form in the back of the van.

“What a fun family reunion,” you whisper.

* * *

 

“I’ll kill anyone that hurts Sam,” Dean growls, pacing around the motel room. “I’ll rip their lungs out!”

“We don’t even know if he really has disappeared,” Bobby points out.

Dean scoffs. “Sam isn’t exactly the type to head to the bar without letting me know.”

“I know, I know,” Bobby says. “I’m just saying, there’s no reason to assume the worst.”

“Yeah, except Y/N, one of the best hunters I know, is gone, and now Sam, another one of the best hunters I know, is also gone!” Dean slams his hands down on the marvel sink. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’ll kill every single monster that put its hands on my siblings!”

“Calm down, boy,” Bobby snaps. “Y/N and Sam can take care of each other. We just need to find them.”

“Okay, so where are they?” Dean looks around mockingly. “I don’t see them or any clues as to where they are!”

“We’ll go interview people in the morning,” Bobby says.

“Who?” Dean yells. “Who could we interview about this?”

“The owner of that store Y/N took a picture of,” Bobby suggests. “She left that clue for a reason!”

Dean immediately sobers. “You think Y/N and Sam are there?”

“I doubt Y/N would have been able to take a picture of the place she’s being held in from the outside and then stash it in her car,” Bobby says, knowing full well that Dean would want to check it immediately. “I just know it ties in here somehow. And we’re going to check it out. Tomorrow.”

Dean crosses his arms and clenches his jaw but he finally nods yes. “First thing.”

“They’re fine,” Bobby insists. “Don’t wake up at five in the morning because you’re that pumped about finding your brother. Hell, you may wake up and find that he’s passed out next to you.”

“Why wouldn’t he call before leaving, even if he did see a cute girl?” Dean asks miserably, sitting on his bed like he’d been pushed down.

Bobby shrugs. “Maybe his phone died or he left it in the car. Maybe he didn't want to take his eyes off the girl.”

Dean shakes his head. “Sam doesn’t go for girls at bars usually anyway. There’s no way he’d take one while we’re working this case. Definitely not this one.”

“I’d be surprised if he doesn’t grab a girl before this is over,” the elder hunter counters. “Emotions mess with people’s heads, Dean. Plus, we all know he’s in for a smackdown of epic proportions when we do find Y/N. I’d hide in a bottle and a girl from that. So would you.”

Dean grins despite himself at the thought of you putting Sam in his place. “If he and Y/N are in the same place, then they’ll be fine. They’re unstoppable together.”

Bobby nods. “Exactly.”

Dean picks up the case folder Ash had compiled and waves at Bobby. “I’ll go to bed in just a few minutes. Promise. See you in the morning, nine o’clock?”

“Yeah,” the older hunter agrees. “‘Night.”

“‘Night,” Dean echoes and sits down on the bed to flip through the file. He notices a pattern almost immediately that he would’ve noticed before if Sam hadn’t been hogging it to stare at your picture. In every town that hunters have disappeared in, the receptionist at at least one motel dies. No exceptions.

“Aren’t we dealing with shifters?” Dean murmurs. He might have to speak with that receptionist tomorrow.

* * *

 

_ You, barely four feet tall and wearing pigtails, behind Sam who hesitates in the doorway of a shadowy room. “You’re not scared of the dark, are you, Sammy?” _

_ You, ten years old with a colored tongue from your Jolly Ranchers, laughing at Sam when he hesitates in jumping off the high dive at the pool near Bobby’s. “Sam, come on! Don’t be scared!” _

_ You, perching at the top of the gate surrounding an amusement park, grinning down at Sam. “You’re not  _ scared _ , are you, Sam?” _

_ You, spinning a penknife in your fingers as you and Dean plan the first hunting trip Sam doesn’t go on. “What, scared of a few vamps?” _

_ You, laying on the couch after a hunt and Sam laying on the floor next to you to make sure you keep breathing. “You’re not scared for me, are you, Sam?” _

_ You, nursing a beer and ignoring the looks Dean sends you. “Go for it, Sam. Don’t be  _ scared _.” _

_ You, outside in the rain, running in the mud in Bobby’s backyard and chucking mud at the brothers in a mud war. “Come on out, Sam! You can’t tell me you’re  _ scared _!” _

_ Sam always entered the room. He always jumped off the board. He always climbed the gate. He always went for the girl. _

_ He didn’t go on the hunt. He left you. He went back inside to wash his clothes. _

_ You, with a bloodstained shirt and one of Dean’s sweatpants, a key on a chain around your neck, messy hair, and pink cheeks. “We missed our third Musketeer, Sam. Were you really that scared—” _

_ The pink fades, the hand falls, the smile drops. _

_ You didn’t go with Sam. You leave him. You go outside with a pair of Dean’s sweatpants. _

_ He leaves you, too. _

* * *

 

Sam wakes up someplace that is definitely not a motel bed.

“Hey.” A pebble hits his head as someone hisses at him. “Hey, wake up.”

“Shh!” someone else hisses. “We’re trying to sleep!”

“It’s almost waking time anyway,” the first voice replies.

Sam opens his eyes.

Faint sunlight filters through a row of windows at the very top of the room’s walls, highlighting an enormous room entirely filled with cages—cages like the one Sam’s in.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Sam scrambles up but hits his head on the top of his cage, producing a boom that makes nearly everyone in their cages scramble up as well, and many of the taller prisoners hit their heads on the tops of their cages too.

“Great,” a burly old man grumbles, rubbing his sore head. “Now there’s no way they won’t take someone today.”

“What’s going on?” Sam asks, looking around. All the cages are in perfect lines. About half have occupants.

“We’re not sure, exactly,” the voice that woke Sam up says. He turns around to see a middle-aged woman with red hair and brown eyes. “We’re all hunters and we all end up here with no recollection of how.”

“They take the weakest one every few days,” a young man as old as Sam pipes up.

“Who’s they?”

Everyone around him shrugs.

“They look like humans and they’re not any monster I’ve come across,” an old man with a full-white beard growls. “You’re welcome to try to figure it out when they bring us food, though.”

“Someone’s coming!” a girl by the only doors in the warehouse calls and everyone falls silent.

The doors crash open and a small parade of people enter.

The first three people are one girl being held up by two healthy-looking men in their late forties.

The prisoners all murmur when they see her. Sam cranes his neck to get a glimpse at her face but her head is hanging and her feet drag. She must be unconscious.

“Does anyone  _ else _ have an anti-possession tattoo?” A well-dressed man barks. Everyone flinches. No one meets his eyes or volunteers themselves up.

_ They must be ghosts, _ Sam realizes.  _ Ghosts that are possessing people. _

“I have one more on my left asscheek,” the girl says with a worn-out, choked voice. It sounds like she’d been screaming but it’s also familiar. Maybe he and Dean have hunted with her before.

The two men holding her up glance back at the man who’d shouted, who rolls his eyes and shakes his head. They drag the girl all the way to a cage to the right of Sam’s and throw her in.

“No food today,” the well-dressed man declares and the woman who’d woken Sam up lets out a little groan.

“We didn’t have any yesterday either,” she whispers.

Sam thinks about all the cheeseburgers he’s refused from Dean and his stomach grumbles.

“How’d you get back, girl?” one of the old men asks.

The new girl sits up with a grunt. She spits something out onto her palm. “They’re demons.”

Shock hits Sam but not for the reason it’s hitting everyone else.

“I wasn’t weak enough for one of them to possess me,” she continues.

“Y/N?” Sam whispers, studying the same hair, albeit messier.

The girl flinches and whips her head around, wide eyes widening more when they meet Sam’s hazel ones.

He smiles with relief at how you’re still alive, and breathing, and so utterly beautiful. It only lasts two seconds before your expression turns icy and you turn around without saying a word.

“Y/N, do you remember how you got in here?” Sam asks your back, knowing why you’re so pissed at him you won’t even look at him. It’s multiple reasons, really, but Sam’s not going to apologize for his nasty comments to you in front of all these people.

The woman that had thrown pebbles at Sam to wake him up gasps slightly, not even bothering to pretend she isn’t eavesdropping.

“‘Cause I do,” Sam continues. “And I saw the security tapes of how you got here.”

“Why would you need to watch the tapes?” you snap icily. “You were there. Did the demons give you what you needed or was it all one big lie?”

“Y/N, that wasn’t me,” Sam says gently, scooting to the side of his cage nearest yours. He can’t stop himself from reaching out to you, can’t help the pull towards you he feels, can’t help his need for you to not be angry with him.

You jump when his hand touches your shoulder and practically throw yourself against the other side of your cage. “Now is not the time, Winchester.”

“I think now is exactly the time,” Sam says hotly. “Y/N, you can’t honestly believe I would do this to you! Not for anything!”

“And if it wasn’t you, how would your lookalike know to call me a psychopath with no boundaries and a dumb kid trying to be like my dad?” you ask quietly, so quietly Sam can tell you’re trying not to scream or cry. He winces at the reminder of the insults he’d shot at you that night he left for Stanford. “Tell me, Sam,” you continue, staring straight ahead, “how common of an insult is ‘low-I.Q.’ed girl with a gun fetish’?” You look at Sam and it’s the opposite of how he wants you to look at him: eyes filled with hatred, anger, and a hint of sadness. Sam’s sad, too, though ‘sad’ doesn’t seem like a powerful enough word to describe how much he hates that you’d ever heard those words come out of his mouth.

“Y/N, look at me,” he pleads, even getting onto his knees and clasping his hands together. “That wasn’t me, and you know it, deep down. Maybe—”

“Maybe you’d insult me and abandon me, but you wouldn’t sell me to any demons, right?” you say, your voice dripping dripping with sarcasm. “The bar’s pretty low, don’t you think?”

“I know you hate me,” Sam says. “I hate me, too. Just, please, wait until we’re out before you chew my ass out, okay?”

“Fine,” you mutter.

“I take it you guys know each other?” the red-haired woman asks, glancing between you two with confusion.

You snap, “No!” at the same time Sam says, “Yeah.”

“Hmm,” she says, pursing her lips.

“All right, everyone,” you shout. The conversations the other hunters had been having immediately die down. “As per usual evil villain fashion, the mastermind in there told me all about her plan just before she tried to get rid of me. In this case, get me possessed.” You hold up something in your hand. “This unlocks someone’s cage, so let’s pass it around and see if anyone can open their things, yeah?” You pass it to the person to your left and he tries.

Sam notices for the first time the locks on the top of everyone’s cages. The angel required to reach that lock would be incredibly awkward, not to mention you’d need to see what you were doing in order to get the lock picked. That would explain why none of these hunters had gotten free yet.

Plus… Sam pats his pockets and the seam of his jacket. All his pickers were taken, anyway.

“How’d you get the key?” a thin man asks. When Sam looks closer, he realizes it’s one of your hunting partners. He quickly scans the other cages for your boyfriend but doesn’t see him. He might just be in the back, though.

“It was hanging on a wall with all the other keys,” you reply. “They would have noticed if I took more than one, but I managed to take it while they tried to get a demon inside me.”

“So what’d the ‘evil villain’ say?” the redhead asks loudly. A hush falls over the room.

“Just that she’s selling hunters to demons as vessels,” you reply. “Apparently we’re the iPhones of the demon world.”

“How’d you keep from getting possessed?” a man yells from the back.

“Anti-possession tattoo,” you reply. “They messed it up, though, so I’m at your level right now. You just gotta stay vigilant.”

“How do you know so much about demons?” the redheaded woman asks.

“The mastermind behind this told her everything, duh,” another hunter replies.

“We all run into monsters,” you shrug. “I just had the bad luck to run into demons. Constantly. I mean, that did give me a chance to grab a blade that kills them—actually kills them, like the Colt.” You smirk at Sam’s stunned face.

“That exists?”

“I stashed it in my car, though I’m sure the demons cleared everything out,” you reply.

“Actually, Bobby and Rufus found your car and towed it back. Dean and I looked through it.”

“So what was missing?”

“Well, your journal, unless you hid that somewhere.” When you shake your head, Sam shrugs. “Figured.”

“What about the knife? It looked like a brown piece of stone with spikes on one side, or like a bone?”

Sam squints as he concentrates. “We found a knife like that with the pictures, I think…”

“Yes!” You point at him but quickly look away. “What about my phone, did you find that?”

“No.”

You sigh and roll your eyes. “You guys suck. Have you guys seen George?”

Instantly Sam frowns. “Is that the man in a lot of your photos?”

“What? Oh! You mean Garth? He’s in here, too.” You point at the man you’d been talking to before. “No. George. My dog.”

Sam frowns. He’d seen a burn mark on your wrist when you’d pointed to Garth. “Y/N, your wrist. What’s that?”

“What?” you look down. “It’s another symbol. Makes my blood taste bad to vamps.”

“Really?” Sam shakes his head. “That’s awesome.”

The other hunters suddenly cheer and you and Sam look away from each other quickly. An older man wearing a Patriots baseball cap crawls out of his cage and stands up. “Anybody got any picks?”

“I’ve got my bobby pin,” another lady hunter volunteers. She hands it through the bars of her cage gingerly, like if he drops it it’ll disappear forever.

“All right, so who’s our starting lineup?” Garth asks. He shrugs when the other hunters look at him with confused looks on their faces. “Don’t you think it’s a better idea to let a few people run and get backup?”

A general murmur of assent travels across the room. Sam sticks his arm out of his cage and waves it at the man. “Me and Y/N, definitely! I brought backup but they’re not very trusting. Like, at all. It’ll take me to convince them to come help.”

“All right,” the man nods. “That’s three people. Who else?”

The rest of the hunters shift in their cages and eye each other warily. Finally, a boy with red hair that couldn’t be more than eighteen years old says timidly, “What if they kill you guys for escaping?”

The redheaded woman nods.

“Are you kidding me?” you snap, holding the bars of your cage as you glare at the hunters around you. “We’re all hunters here, right? We all entered this life knowing we would go out one way: bloody. Are you seriously saying you’d rather starve in a cage until you become a demon’s bitch than go out there, take down the people that are trying to kill us, and do our damn job? Every hunt we go on could be our last. This one is no different.”

The silence that follows your speech is deafening. Everybody, Sam included, is gazing at you in awe.

Finally the moment is broken by the same redheaded boy timidly volunteering.

You nod firmly at him. Other people start to volunteer as well until there’s seven in total.

“You should write speeches,” Sam murmurs, earning a huff and then a scowl from you.

“Don’t make me laugh, Winchester, I’m still mad at you.”

Sam pretends to zip his lips shut.

“What happens when they notice some people are missing?” another hunter yells.

“Hopefully we’ll be back before that happens,” you mutter as the man starts to pick the lock with the pin. “There aren’t any meals scheduled, so there’s no reason for them to visit.” With a click, the lock opens and you scramble out of your cage, sighing loudly with relief as you stand up for the first time in forever. You twist your upper half back and forth until the vertebrae in your spine pops.

Sam smiles and thanks the man when his cage is unlocked. You’re bending over to touch your toes when Sam clears his throat to get your attention.

“Uh-huh?”

“They did the same thing for me, you know,” he says. “The shifter, I mean. She looked like you, and then another one showed up looking like Dean.”

You shrug. “So?”

Sam blinks. “What?”

You roll your eyes. “Sam, it’s been four years. We’ve both changed. I know what you want and it’s not going to happen.”

“Oh? And what is it I want?”

“You want to make amends. You want to be my big brother again, but you burned that bridge a long time ago. I’m sorry, Sam, but sometimes people just grow apart. You can’t change that.”

“It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“Doesn’t it?” You raise your eyebrows and turn away. Sam grabs your arm gently to stop you.

“Y/N, we both overreacted the day I left. We both said terrible things. But we can build new bridges! You’re like my sister, Y/N.”  _ You’re so much more. _ “We grew up together. You can’t walk away from that.”

“Oh?” you yank your arm out of Sam’s grasp. “Watch me.”

This time, Sam lets you go, even though it’s a punch to the gut and a crack in the heart.

* * *

 

“I’m really so glad we’re finally getting the coverage we deserve,” the owner of this town’s Appliance Goods warehouse, Susan Goode, says excitedly. “Not many people know about our membership deals.”

Dean rolls his eyes behind her back. “I bet.” He looks into the different rooms as he passes them. There’s one completely filled with packages, another that’s empty, and a third with nothing but a wall covered with keys hanging on pegs.

Bobby shoots him a glare. “Well, ma’am, that’s what  _ The Waterside Front _ is looking for.”

“You know,” Susan says as she leads the two hunters into her office, “it’s so funny. I’ve never even heard of  _ The Waterside Front _ before.”

“We are pretty new,” Dean offers up the lame excuse as he peers around her office with interest. “She’s sure got an impressive collection of books.

The look Susan gives him would have alerted both hunters then and there that she knew they were making it all up, but Susan’s not dumb. She wouldn’t do that when either of them are watching; that’s like stepping on a stick when you’re out hunting deer in the woods.

Well, this time the hunters are the hunted. Susan just has to wait until her backup gets here for their meeting. She hasn’t had enough time yet to clue them in, but David isn’t completely an idiot. She doesn’t know that Dean had paid David a visit earlier and he’s dead.

Bobby starts to interview her and Dean glances around the office, fidgeting. Bobby can’t tell him to cut it out because that’ll draw Susan’s attention to the problem (not that it’s exactly hard to miss).

When Dean stills, both the shifter and the hunter notice, but to keep up the unnecessary act, they keep chatting.

“I see you’ve written a few books,” Dean remarks, standing up from the chair by pushing with his arms the armrests as if he wouldn’t have been able to get up on his own. “We can add that to your background information. Here, write this down—” Dean points in Bobby’s direction— “ _ The Positive Effects of Meditation on Your Mind and Body! _ ’”

Bobby writes that down, glaring at Dean as he waits with a fake patient look on his face. He’s playing a game, but Bobby doesn’t know what game. Once he’s finished writing that first book title down, Dean picks up another book. “‘ _ How Running a Business Can Help With Your Personal Life’ _ .”

Susan gulps, her eyes fixed on a book shoved in her collection just a few more hardbacks from the one Dean’s holding right now. She’d intended to stall for longer, draw it out just to see the looks on their faces when she pressed for more information about their newspaper. David still shouldn’t be here for another half hour.

Feigning a confidence she doesn’t have, Susan stands up and smoothes out her skirt. “Well, while you two write those titles down, I’m going to run to the washroom. I’ll only be—”

She’s cut off by the sound of a gun cocking. “Not another move,” Dean says quietly. “Care to explain why you’ve got my little sister’s hunting journal on your bookshelf?” He holds up the one mistake in Susan’s plan, the leather journal with a strap keeping it shut, stray papers wedged inbetween pages ruffled by being written on or having things spilled onto them. Susan had wanted to keep the journal as a constant physical reminder that she’d been the one to catch the elusive Y/N Y/L/N. She hadn’t anticipated the hunters coming to her own office.

“I found that a few days ago in one of my warehouses,” she tries.

“And you picked it up and put it right in the middle of your collection?” Dean lets out a fake laugh and points to her chair. The hand holding the gun up still hasn’t wavered. Of course it hasn’t; he’s a hunter. He kills shifters worse than Susan for breakfast. “Sit down. Let’s have a chat.”

Bobby holds up his phone camera once she’s sitting. “Definitely a shifter,” he says gravely.

“All right,” Dean says, cracking his neck. “Here comes the fun part.”

* * *

 

The door to the warehouse slowly creeps open and Dean pokes his head inside. When he sees that the way is clear, he opens the door fully. Bobby comes in carrying a duffel bag full of keys.

“Hey,” Dean whispers to the lookout. “We’re here to get you out.”

“How do we know it’s not a trick?” he asks bravely as other hunters start to wake up. “You could be a demon or a shifter. Y/N told us all about your plans!”

“Christo,” Dean says, staring right into the man’s eyes. “There? I’m not a demon.” He hands him his phone. “Look through the camera; I’m not a shifter either. My name’s Dean Winchester and I’m looking for Sam and Y/N.”

The man hands the phone back to Dean, loudly announcing, “He’s good!”

A few people cheer when Bobby frees the first person from their cage.

“All right, guys, once everyone’s out we gotta leave Dodge ASAP!” Dean barks over the growing clamor of hunters moving around. “Me and Bobby got all the monsters we saw, but more might be coming as well as humans!”

“I love a good ol’ hunter raid!” a grizzled old man yells. “To the car dealership!”

“Have you seen Y/N or Sam?” Dean asks various hunters urgently.

“They got out a little while ago,” a middle-aged woman pipes up. “They went looking for you for backup.”

“So they’re probably back at the motel room,” Dean groans. “Hey—hey, Bobby!” He catches the old man’s arm. “I’m gonna go find Sam and Y/N, all right? You make sure these guys all get outta town safe, all right?”

“Yep.”

“Dean pats his shoulder. “Thanks.”

* * *

Sam looks back at you for what feels like the fiftieth time. You’re lagging behind the group, calling for George, your dog. “Y/N! Come on! Your dog isn’t all that important right now!”

You roll your eyes at Sam but jog to catch up anyway. “How much farther is your motel room, anyway?”

Sam points to the motel across the parking lot they’d just exited the woods from. “We stayed in the same place as you.”

The door to his and Dean’s room is slightly ajar. Garth holds a finger to his lips when he sees that. The other other hunters nod. You and Sam immediately prepared to guard each other’s weak spots from any attackers.

Garth kicks open the door and the tall, scruffy boy inside turns around.

You and Garth both smile, but Sam’s heart drops. It’s your boyfriend.

“George, you’re all right,” you sigh with relief and hug him.

Sam frowns. “George? I thought that was the name of your dog.”

“Sometimes.” You purse your lips. “I’ll explain it later.”

“How’d you know to come here?” Garth asks.

This George dude points to Sam. “I recognized him and his brother from Y/N’s pictures, but I didn’t get a chance to contact them. The shifters sure moved fast.”

“Hey, you took the photo of the shifter’s motel room, right?” Sam asks, narrowing his eyes at George. “Why?”

“We came here to work the case but ended up a part of the case,” he shrugs. “I knew Bobby and Rufus were towing cars but I’ve never met either of them in person. They wouldn’t trust me if I approached them so I took those pictures as clues just in case you got here and the shifters got me too.”

“So you’re a hunter?” one of the other hunters asks.

George smiles and nods. “Y/N dragged me into this life when I came looking for her. Her dad and my mom had a thing during one of his hunts. Sucks I never got to meet him.”

Immediately Sam relaxes. “You’re Y/N’s brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Why haven’t you met Y/F/N?” Sam asks.

The smile slides off your face and you glare at Sam. “He’s dead.”

“ _ What _ ?”

“I called you,” you shrug. “You didn’t answer. Dean’s phone was disconnected and Bobby was across the country. So I burned him alone.”

“I’m so sorry, Y/N,” Sam says softly. “If I’d known—”

“You would’ve if you hadn’t left,” you snap and turn away.

Garth shifts at Sam’s side. “It’s kind of a sore subject for her.”

“I can see that,” Sam murmurs.

* * *

 

“Dean!” you yell, thirteen years old and in a bathing suit, at the edge of the taller diving board at the pool near Bobby’s place.

Dean, young and eighteen, ignoring the flock of adoring girls trying to introduce themselves to him for once, waves back at you. When he’s with you and Sam he can’t be bothered with girls; what if a monster tries to get you?

“Hurry up,” fourteen-year-old Sam complains, wrapping his arms around himself as he waits at the bottom of the slide’s ladder.

“Do a flip!” Dean bellows.

You stick out your tongue at him and back up a few steps. Taking a running start is always best.

With a shout of joy, you catapult yourself off the board, floating for a few seconds or forever.

Then you start to fall, a weightless feeling in your stomach, and you hit the water with a small splash. All the sounds around you are suddenly muted and you open your eyes. You can see the rays of sunlight shining through the water.

Your hair floats around your head, a dark cloud, before you push off the bottom  of the pool and surface, blinking pool water out of your eyes, and quickly swim to get out of the pool and back into the line for the board.

Sam doesn’t take as long as you had; he slings his body up the stairs and sprints off the board, aiming to set a new record for how far he can jump.

You turn around. All the kids that had been waiting in front of you disappear to be replaced by you as old as you are currently, but it’s not you—her eyes are black.

You’re not thirteen anymore. You’re twenty-one now, wearing the same outfit as the demon in front of you. It’s because there isn’t a demon in front of you.

There’s a mirror.

Your reflection smiles. “Wake up, Y/N.”

* * *

 

Dean breathes out a sigh of relief when he sees the group of people inside the motel room. “Sammy!”

Sam turns around as Dean crosses the room and meets him in the hug. Dean clutches his jacket for a moment before pulling back. “You good?”

Sam sniffs and twitches. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Hey, Dean.”

Dean turns around.

You blink at him slowly, your hands in your pockets. You can’t even take them out before he sweeps you up into a hug.

“Hey, Spider,” Dean whispers into your hair.

“Long time no see.”

Dean sets you down and punches your shoulder. “Yeah, and why’s that?”

You wince. “I was acting like a child.”

“Because you were a child,” Bobby says warmly from behind you. “Hey, girlie.”

You throw your arms around him and Dean introduces himself to George.

When you finally pull away from Bobby, he holds both your hands. “Girl, it’s been too long.” He looks down for a moment at your joined hands and frowns. “Let’s get the strangers out and have a private reunion, you think?”

“What about Garth and George?” you ask.

“I think they can join us later,” Bobby says. He smiles but his mouth doesn’t open. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Tell me about it,” you gripe and roll your eyes.

Bobby drops your hands. “Sam, you, Y/N, Garth, and George help get the other hunters out of town. Garth and George, you guys have another room, right? We were hopin’ for a private reunion.

“Of course,” George says, smiling at Sam. “Let’s go. I want to learn a little bit more about Y/N’s other brother.”

You wave goodbye to Dean and Bobby. “We won’t be long.” You haven’t even shut the door before George’s easy smile convinces Sam that he may like this dude after all. “Oh, that reminds me,” you say loudly. “Sam, you didn’t bring my car, by any chance?”

“No, why?” Sam asks, looking over his shoulder at you.

“Well, I don’t imagine the car ride back to Bobby’s will be very comfortable,” you laugh.

“You’re going back to Bobby’s?” Sam frowns. Sometimes your thoughts don’t always add up.

“Well, now I am, to get my car.” You raise one eyebrow at Sam. “Me, Garth, and George have to get around somehow.”

“Actually,” Garth pipes up, “I was thinking about heading down to see my girlfriend. Take a little break from hunting.”

George shrugs. “I understand. Your experience was probably very jarring. Being kidnapped is never fun.”

Sam nods.

Everyone walks in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Sam asks George, “So why do you have the same name as Y/N’s dog?”

George huffs and scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, um… I actually am the dog.”

Sam stares blankly at him.

“I’m a Skinwalker,” George clarifies. “My mom was one but Y/F/N didn’t know or didn’t care; I never really got the story from my mom. He never visited again but he did give my mom his number in case something happened. Well, some hunters killed my mom so I called his number and Y/N answered instead.”

“He’s good,” you say quietly. “I checked him out.”

“I trust you,” Sam says. He has no doubt you did your research on George; you’re not exactly the most trusting person ever.

George blinks. “Really?”

“I’ve met some nice monsters in the past,” Sam shrugs. “Plus, I like dogs.”

Garth laughs. “That’s what I said when Y/N told me!”

“So does that help with hunting?” Sam asks. “Dogs have a really good sense of smell, right, so it would be awesome if you could, like smell demons or something.”

You look at Sam sharply and he blushes. Maybe that was an insensitive question. George doesn’t seem too bothered, though. He just smiles. He smiles a lot for a hunter.

“Demons smell the same as regular people. Werewolves and vampires smell different, though. I haven’t run into too many other non-humans apart from that.”

Sam can’t ask any more questions because you shush him loudly when he opens his mouth. You point to the town’s small car dealership. Despite the late hour, the parking lot’s lights are still on, clearly showing the gaggle of hunters ducking around. The dealership is closed, which is a relief. They would see the hunters clearly.

“Oh, this is like Black Friday,” you whisper with glee.

Sam smiles. You’ve gotten into fistfights with people when Sam took you shopping on Black Friday, which was a three-year-old long tradition before he left for Stanford.

“I’m gonna get a huge-ass truck,” you whisper before heading across the street, George hot on your heels.

Sam frowns.

“What car do you want, Sam?” Garth asks. “I’m thinking a nice red Honda.”

Sam smiles. “My brother drives me most places. He’s got a Chevy Impala.”

“What year?”

“‘67.”

Garth whistles. “That’s a sweet ride.”

“It’s a family car,” Sam says. “My dad’s before he gave it to Dean.”

All the other hunters are fussy about their cars, which is surprising considering these cars aren’t permanent; they’re just using them to get to Bobby’s. Maybe it’s because the cars are all sleek and new.

Then there was the whole hassle about breaking into the dealership to get plates.

“Remember, Rufus will be at the junkyard!” Sam calls after the last leaving hunter in the caravan to get their real cars.

“George, I’ll drive you back to the motel,” Garth calls to your brother from his brand-new red Honda. “Man, I’ve never driven a car this flashy before.”

“We’ll walk back,” Sam tells the other men. George winks at Sam.

“Am I expected to ride back to Bobby’s with you and your brother?” you ask, eyebrows raised.

“You could ride with Bobby,” Sam mutters. He’d have thought you would’ve liked to ride with him and Dean.

Sam’s never been scared to talk to you before. The only people you fought with as a child were John and Y/F/N, so there were never long periods of time when you and Sam ignored each other out of anger. The worst fight sam’s ever had with you (apart from the Stanford fight) was that one time you’d snuck out when you were sixteen to hunt with Dean and broken your thumb so Sam yelled at you for getting hurt and at Dean for letting you get hurt. You’d gotten mad at him for trying to boss you around, as usual, and ignored him for a full half day before offering one of the subtle olive branches you prefer to an outright apology, which Sam had grasped immediately.

There’s quite a big difference between half a day and four years.

Sam’s never looked at you and seen a stranger.

He clears his throat, looking at you out of the corner of his eyes. “It’s funny.”

“What?”

“We practically lived together when we were kids,” Sam says. He could have said ‘we were practically siblings’ but he doesn’t want you to think about that. No matter what he says to Dean, he can’t deny that he never really thought of you as a sister. Not really.

The only other person he’s felt a fraction of what he feels for you for was Jess. He liked Jess. He might have loved her, but their relationship was always filled with lies and secrets that would have ruined everything eventually.

There’s a reason hunters never get out. Sam’s accepted that long ago, that he was never going to be out, but he still wishes that Jess had been unscathed.

“You chose to get out,” you say. “I was respecting your wishes.” There’s a distinct edge to your voice that Sam doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t recognize anything about you, really. People change in four years, but this sort of change is too drastic. Maybe it’s because you lost your dad. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, though,” you say, reaching for the doorknob of the room they’d left Dean and Bobby in.

Sam shouldn’t have assumed you meant you’d been waiting for this reunion. He should have asked you to clarify, to stall for one moment or to keep his focus on you, but his eyes were fixed on the door, anticipating the happy reunion, so he hadn’t seen the glint of something silver heading for his stomach.

The door swings open and Dean drags you inside, but not before your hand slips down and drags a deep cut on Sam’s thigh with your knife.

Sam yelps and jerks away, wide eyes watching as Dean drags your smaller, writhing body into the room. You’re cursing and shrieking, flailing the knife.

Sam had taught you how to throw knives.

“Dean, what’s going on?” he asks, reaching out one hand to stabilize himself against the wall.

Bobby helps him to the motel bed. “She’s been possessed.”

“What?”

Dean knocks the knife out of your hands and shoves you down.

“What the hell?” you snap. “Dean, what’s wrong with you? Sam’s the possessed one!”

Bobby crosses the room and grabs your arm, showing the brothers the mark on your arm you’d told Sam makes you taste bad to vamps. “That’s a binding symbol, like a lock. The demon doesn’t want to leave.”

“You’re crazy!” you cry. “Dean, you can’t honestly believe him—he’s been possessed too!”

“Christo,” Dean says calmly.

Sam gapes when your eyes turn black.

“Well, nevermind,” the demon growls. “Guess the jig is up.”

“Speaking of up…” Dean points to the ceiling, where a Devil’s Trap has been painted.

The demon rolls your eyes. “I’m not leaving.”

“All we gotta do is mess up that seal on your wrist and send you on your way,” Dean says, waving the knife you’d cut Sam with in the air.

“You won’t be alive long enough to do that,” the demon snarls. “Trust me, I’ve learned a few tricks. Hunters seem to get tied up by monsters a lot, don’t they?”

Dean moves to cut you but Bobby stops him. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been hunting with this meatsuit for a long time,” the demon hisses. “Weren’t you wondering earlier why Y/N never contacted you? She’s not very good at holding grudges against you boys, is she?”

“How long?” Dean repeats, pointing the silver knife at you.

The demon laughs. “That won’t hurt me. Y/N, on the other hand…”

“What about this?” Dean reaches into his coat and reveals the weird knife that had been in your trunk.

“Hurt me and you hurt Y/N,” the demon says quickly.

“Oh, I think she can handle it,” Dean says. “Now, how long have you been inside her?”

“Why does it matter?”

Dean lunges at the demon, who flinches and yelps, “Four years!”

Sam looks at the ground. While he was at college trying to forget you, you’d been possessed.

“The day after the Stanford fight,” the demon continues, licking your lips at the shock and horror on the hunters’ faces. “She wanted to go back and help Sam move into the college or at least make sure Dean wasn’t angry with her, but I didn’t let her.” It laughs. “You didn’t even notice, Sam, but when has she ever been able to stay mad at you? You were so blinded with your own selfishness that you didn’t notice Y/N, the one person you were determined to protect, had been possessed!”

“Shut up,” Sam mutters.

“She’s been screaming the whole time,” the demon gloats. “I woke her up just so she could watch you all die.”

“Why?” Bobby asks. “Why ride around in Y/N for so long and hunt?”

The demon grins. “I had a bone to pick with her father, so how better to get back at him? Kill him using his own daughter’s meatsuit, let him die with the knowledge that his daughter would be a demon’s bitch for the rest of her life. It was the perfect plan.”

“I bet you didn’t count on the shifters,” Sam snarls. The cut on his leg is stinging, but he won’t give the demon the satisfaction of wincing or attending to it.

“No.” It shakes your head. “But didn’t you think it was sort of suspicious, me managing to get a key? Susan’s office didn’t even have the key wall. No, I was content to sit and let Garth and all you other hunters get possessed until you showed up, Sam.”

Sam swallows.

“No, you see, I may be a hunter, but you three are, unfortunately, on my hit list.” The demon shrugs. “It’s just fun, you see, Y/N’s little feelings when she’s around you. I can’t wait to hear her watch her own hands crush your skulls in.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Dean vows. He lunges forward again and cuts through the binding symbol with the demon knife. “Exorcizamus te—”

The demon snaps your neck all the way around, turning you into an owl—one time John had brought them to a zoo and you had pretended to turn your head around like an owl’s by wearing your shirt backwards—and Sam  _ screams. _

“Oops,” the demon says, turning your head back around and blinking innocently at the hunters. “Now I’m the only thing keeping little Y/N alive.”

Dean hesitates, looking to Bobby for advice, but Sam doesn’t.

“Sammy?” Dean asks when Sam grabs the demon knife out of his hand. “Sam—”

Sam stabs the demon. With a sound like hissing metal and sparks flying, it cries out and an unholy light glows in your eyes and throat.

Sam leaves the knife in your body because that will stop the bleeding from being stabbed as he lowers your suddenly limp body to the ground. “Y/N?”

Your head flops, bones grinding sickeningly as he puts his hand on your shoulder.

“Y/N…” Sam chokes out, his eyes starting to well up with tears. “Come on, please…” He whirls around. “Dean, help me!”

“I…” Dean stares at you, mouth agape. It takes a visible struggle to look at Sam.

“Oh my God,” Sam whispers, hugging your body to his, disregarding the knife in your torso and your snapped neck. “Y/N, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know…” A keening noise greets his ears. He doesn’t realize it’s coming from him.

Bobby sits down heavily one one of the motel beds.

“Sammy?” Dean asks, dropping to his knees behind his brother.

“Dean, we have to—we have to get her to the hospital!” Sam gasps. “We can—”

Dean shakes his head.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut and bends forward, trying to get as close as possible to you, trying to tear himself apart at the waist so he’ll be able to die along with you, a hole opening up inside his chest that he wants to fall into. He sobs, shoulders shaking, gasping breaths that don’t give him enough air. How can he breathe in a world without you?

Sam doesn’t notice when George and Garth enter the room. He doesn’t recognize that he knows them when they try to take him away from you. He turns into a fucking animal incapable of human reason, hands turned into claws that cling to you because you’re the only thing that keeps him alive. The roar of grief in his brain that sounds almost like the ocean drowns out their voices.

All he can do is cry.

* * *

 

“Sam?” Dean opens up the door to the panic room. His brother, curled up on the bed that’s too small, doesn’t move. “Sammy?”

Sam hugs his bloody hands to his chest. Your blood mixed with his. Sam can’t imagine ever washing his hands.

“Come on, Sammy,” Dean coaxes. “The funeral’s started. There’s a lot of people up there that’d like to see you.” He ventures closer and sighs when he sees his brother’s bloody hands. “Dude, that’s so not hygienic. You could get diseases from Y/N’s blood.”

They’d loaded your body into Bobby’s car with Sam clinging to it all the way because Dean couldn’t bear to burn you by that motel. Sam hadn’t even been aware of the drive back to Bobby’s, all his attention focused on cradling your body to his, but he woke up when Dean and Bobby had to wrestle you away from him. He was back to the animal because it hurts less to be angry or feel nothing.

Sam doesn’t remember exactly what he said but it was enough to stop Bobby and Dean from burning your body.

Sam dug your grave himself. The shovel gave him blisters and splinters, even tore skin off in some places.

It’s nothing; Sam barely felt it over the rage he channeled into the dirt and definitely can’t feel it now.

If Dean had cut the mark before, if Sam had noticed why you were acting so weird, if he had tried to contact you when he was at Stanford, if he had gone after you when you’d stormed off, if he hadn’t left at all…

It’s too late. Too late, and Sam’s burying his almost-sister, the girl he loved, the girl he hunted and traveled and played with all the time. Y/N, the girl that was always too large for life, the girl that felt so much and pretended she didn’t, the girl that could fly with her own magic.

You fit in Sam’s arms perfectly when he put your body in the box Dean had found but you had felt so much smaller than the last time he held you. Too small. He can’t help but think that you’re going to wake up when Sam starts to pile the dirt onto your box and not be able to get out. He can’t bring himself to put the box in the hole.

Fitting that Sam could dig your grave but refused responsibility for putting you in it.

Dean had cleaned you up while Sam was digging (which was the only time he could touch you without Sam wigging out). The empty box he’d put your body into looked too big, but Dean had almost burned down the shed he’d found it in when your legs couldn’t lay all the way down. He can’t do anything fucking right, can he? You deserve so much better.

It’s a good thing the brothers are so in sync. Dean wouldn’t speak so you wouldn’t frown (you always scowled in your sleep when someone made noise near you) and Sam didn’t even remember how to. Still, Sam understood what his brother wanted when he crouched by the top of the box. Sam had picked up the bottom and they had slowly lowered the box into the ground.

Sam had stopped Dean when he’d moved to put the lid over your face. He’d lifted up your head to take the necklace with the key off your neck and put it around his own. Maybe it’ll strangle him in his sleep.

“Don’t nail her in,” Sam had finally said, his voice choked.

You hadn’t frowned because you’re not sleeping.

Then Sam had walked around the side of the house, picked up a hammer, and started to destroy some of the rustbuckets lying around.

They’d had to sedate him. Like some crazy animal, Bobby had shot him full of tranquilizers and he woke up in the panic room with your journal on his chest and a huge bag of your photos.

Sam’s already read the journal all the way through. He hasn’t started on the photos because he knows every one featuring you after he left for Stanford isn’t really featuring you. It’s featuring the demon Sam had killed, the one that kept you away from your family for four years and eventually killed you.

“You’ve got to at least wash your hands,” Dean insists.

Sam shakes his head, which is more of a response than he’s given to Dean yet.

“Sammy, you’re wearing blood for gloves!”

“Go away,” Sam mutters.

“Sam—”

Sam rolls over and stands up, scowling as he draws himself up to his full height. “Get the hell away from me before I kill you, Dean.”

Dean takes an involuntary step back. “Sammy, what the hell?”

“You’re fine,” Sam whispers. “How the  _ fuck _ are you fine, Dean?”

In a move that surprises the both of them, Sam punches his brother. It feels good. He tries again but Dean dodges, one hand on his chin where Sam had landed the hit.

Dean shoves Sam away and scrambles out of the panic room. Sam roars and hits the wall when the door shuts.

“I am the furthest thing from fine right now, Sam,” Dean says quietly. “But you are wigging out so I need to help you before anything else.”

“I’m fine,” Sam snarls. “You’re the one that’s crazy. Let me out, Dean. I’m going to bring Y/N back.”

“No, you’re not,” Dean says softly and shuts the talking window, ignoring his brother’s yells as he walks back up the stairs. He stops on the third one, dragging a hand over his face. He’s too tired to keep going. Up there will be people that couldn’t be bothered to notice you were possessed by a demon, armed with empty smiles and promises like ‘She’s in a better place now’ and ‘I’m so sorry’.

Dean sits down and cries and no one hears it over Sam’s screaming.


	3. Finding

For the past month Jo, Ellen, and George have practically moved into Bobby’s house. Sam, Dean, and Bobby haven’t hunted at all though Jo has left a few times to settle cases close to Bobby’s, but she mostly trails after Dean. Ellen takes care of Bobby and Sam.

She’d only met you a few times (and at least two of those times you were possessed by a demon, it turns out) but you’d seemed like a good kid. A quiet kid with a bright smile and a pride in your scars she rarely sees; most people like to hide the marks of hunting. A sweet, quiet girl who became loud when she knew the people she was around with a reckless streak a mile wide.

Definitely too young to die.

Dean’s turned quiet. He’s fixed almost half the cars in the junkyard and showed no signs of stopping. Sometimes he reminds Jo of a ghost when she sees how thin he’s become, when he walks almost silently, when the light reflecting off the cars shines into her eyes and she becomes blinded for a few seconds and it looks like Dean disappears and reappears in a different spot.

Well, you dying definitely killed them all.

Sam’s barely even allowed out of the panic room, what with all his ravings about how he’s going to save you making everyone nervous he’s going to sell his soul. Besides, the house is stocked full with weapons and Sam might have lost it just enough to use one if someone tries to stop him from doing that.

And Bobby, well, he’s replaced all his daily food and water intake with one thing: alcohol. Whiskey, beer, anything to take the edge off. He always looks a little dazed, but then again, they all do.

The sun was shining that morning and Ellen had decided it was as good a day as any to let Sam out for a while. It’s warm enough that he only has to wear a t-shirt, a slight wind ruffling his hair, but he doesn’t seem to notice any of that.

Sam had shut down the moment they let him out, but Dean had woken up. Maybe it’s what he needed to keep going; another little sibling to protect now that he failed so utterly with you. It’s what shuts Sam down, finally; stops the ravings and the anger. Jo likes to think it’s a good thing that Dean takes his little brother from her and her mother without a word and supports him on the way out of the house. Sam stares blankly, but his feet do move as Dean moves him. For the first time in a while, the hand that’s been squeezing onto the key hanging from his neck lets go and he even pushes himself away from the doorway when his shoulders prove too broad to pass through next to Dean’s.

George is sitting where he usually is in the backyard, unable to stand coming inside the house and facing Sam and Dean and the reminder that his sister had been possessed by a demon the whole time he’d known her. He couldn’t have known, sure, but that doesn’t really make him feel better. He’s gone through all the Polaroid photos that Sam had thrown out of the panic room one day out of anger, sorted the ones where the demon wearing you is in the picture, and put those in a separate pile. He’s not sure what to do with them.

Sam sits down, leaning against the tree he’d dug your grave in front of. He still remembers how you’d looked when he’d buried you. You’re rotting by now.

A single tear drips down his cheek.  _ Y/N, I’m laying on your bones. _

The very last thing he’d said to you, before you left and he left for Stanford, was “I hope I never see you again! You’re just stubborn and selfish and a low-I.Q.’ed girl with a gun fetish!”

Nothing he’d said to you in the cages, no apologies, nothing counts. You didn’t hear it. You were possessed. The knowledge of that, his very last words to you, are so painful to Sam that he might just die. There’s no excuse for him to have ever said that, except for the fact that he has anger issues and wasn’t thinking about anyone but himself. He was selfish, plain and simple.

“Sam?”

George’s hesitant voice makes Sam open his eyes with reluctance. The last time he’d talked to George he’d threatened to kill him. “Yeah?”

“Want to help me with these?” George holds up a bag of small polaroid pictures. “They’re all the pictures of the demon.”

“What do you want me to do?”

George holds up a lighter.

Sam doesn’t smile, but he does enjoy watching the remnants of the demon’s time riding your ass go up in flames.

“Can you tell me about her?” George finally asks timidly, braced for Sam to hit him physically or verbally or both. “I don’t think I ever actually knew her.”

Sam closes his eyes and sits back down on top of your grave. The ground feels warm, like it’s soaking up the your body heat, like your heart is still pumping underneath all that dirt. He hurts so bad inside he wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out all his insides have been scooped out. It’s just… aching. “Yeah. I’ll tell you about Y/N.”

* * *

 

They were right to keep him in the panic room. The first night he’s allowed outside Sam sneaks out once everybody’s asleep. He doesn’t like to sleep much because you’re always in his dreams.

Scratch that, he loves to sleep but he hates to wake up.

Better not to sleep at all. Better for you not to be torn from him every morning.

Dean’s waiting for him outside the door. Apparently he doesn’t like to sleep much either. “Sam, what are you doing?” His purpose—to protect his siblings at all costs—makes his face stern, arms crossed. He won’t lose Sam along with Y/N. He won’t, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. The second Sam is lost Dean finds enough strength to find him.

“Dean, get out of my way,” Sam says quietly. He’s a very good actor; he convinced everyone except Dean, who knows him best, that he was fine. That he didn’t feel sick every morning because he’s just rediscovered that you’re dead. That he’s coming to terms with your death.

No, there’s no way Sam will ever accept the terms of any deal if those terms includes you being dead.

“Sam, I’m not going to let you sell your soul,” Dean says quietly.

“You’re not going to be able to stop me.”

Dean’s face crumples. “You think Y/N would want this, Sam?”

“I don’t think Y/N would want to be dead!”

Dean looks around, remembering the other sleeping people in the house. He doesn’t want Jo and Ellen and Bobby to know about Sam not being as okay as he pretends he is. It’ll make them feel useless, and it’s not even their job to take care of Sam.

It’s his.

Dean drags Sam out to the tree they’d buried you under, the night air chilly but not cold enough for actual discomfort. Goosebumps raise on Sam’s arms as he crosses them, glancing to the patch of disturbed ground where you’re laying.

“Dean, Y/N…” Sam swallows and blinks. “She can’t be dead. She just can’t.”

“Sam, I know it sucks ass. I know!” Dean, who’s lost his younger sister, knows just how Sam feels. “But we’re going to get past this. You’ve gotta get past this. I can only help so much.”

“I can’t,” Sam whispers. “I can’t, Dean.”

“I know it feels that way, but Sam…” Dean shakes his head and tilts his face so that Sam can’t see the glossy sheen on his eyes. “We’re going to get better, I promise. We’re going to get over this—”

“I don’t  _ want _ to get better, Dean!” Sam yells, shoving his brother in the chest. “I left Y/N and she died because of me—”

“How can you say that?” Dean bellows back.

“If she hadn’t run off she wouldn’t have been possessed!”

“You heard the demon; it was going to get Y/N anyway!”

“Then I should have been there to notice that something was wrong! Four years, Dean.” Sam’s voice cracks and he sinks to the ground, his legs unable to hold him up any longer. “Four fucking years.”

Dean crouches and throws his arms around his baby brother. Sam holds onto him like he would a lifesaver, because Dean’s the only thing keeping him from drowning. “I know,” Dean murmurs as Sam sobs into his jacket. “I know. We’ll be better, I promise.”

“She wasn’t supposed to die,” Sam whispers. “It wasn’t… she shouldn’t have died.”

A sudden wind ruffles his hair.

“That is correct,” an alien voice says behind them. Sam stands up while Dean whirls. A man with messy dark hair and a trenchcoat is standing in the middle of the yard.

“Who the hell are you?” Dean growls, reaching inside his pocket for a gun and drawing it up in record time. The man doesn’t seem concerned by the firearm pointed at his face.

“I am Castiel,” he answers.

“What are you?” Sam snarls, taking out the demon knife.

“I’m an angel of the lord.”

Dean shoots him.

It doesn’t do anything.

This Castiel tilts his head at the Winchester brothers. “I believe you were close to Y/N Y/L/N, correct? Some might say you were siblings.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Dean asks.

“I am angel of the lord, Dean,” Castiel replies. “And you three are my charges.”

“What does that mean?”

Castiel looks at Sam, an odd but amused look on his face. “There is quite an uproar in heaven at the moment.”

“What?”

“The Cupids are protesting the most, though of course Lachesis was rather invested in your lives. Atropos is mostly enraged that the demon somehow found out how to change fate.”

Dean shoots him because he’s not making any sense.

“Fate,” Castiel elaborates. “The Three Fates—Atropos and Lachesis want to put things back how they’re supposed to be. Their sister is rather occupied at the moment, though, so she doesn’t mind as much.”

“So you’re saying Y/N really  _ isn’t _ supposed to be dead?” Sam repeats.

Castiel nods. “And then, of course, the Cupids were very interested in your story. They would call it a tragedy with a happy ending, but of course, there’s no happy ending.”

Sam rolls his eyes. He knows that.

“They are fans of happy endings,” the ‘angel’ continues. “Besides, your story was official business, high-up. My superiors aren’t happy with their failure.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Dean says, about to pull the trigger to shoot him again. Third time’s the charm, right?

“I’m just trying to explain,” the so-called angel says. He snaps his fingers.

* * *

 

Sam wakes up in his bed, sunlight streaming through the windows. He’d had a crazy dream last night. Everyone knows angels aren’t real.

It hadn’t been a very good dream, but it also hadn’t been very terrible either. Sam doesn’t get up, preferring to stay in bed and go over what the imaginary angel had been trying to say. He’d talked mostly in circles, but when Sam remembers what he’d said—which is weird for a dream; normally they aren’t so vivid—he can sort of make out what he meant: important people up in heaven were angry that you’d died.

Well, of course that would be a dream Sam would have. Y/N was his world; of course he would dream that she was so important that people up in heaven would be mad she was dead.

If there are angels and a heaven, however, Sam doubts they would care all that much. Why else would they have let Y/N die in the first place? Why would they have waited so long?

Sam finally sits up and glances outside. The tree they’d buried you under is… gone.

Sam blinks and makes his way to the window. The tree has fallen even though there wasn’t even a storm yesterday and it was perfectly healthy.

When he looks past the tree, he sees all the trees in the forest behind Bobby’s yard for about a half-mile radius have fallen.

“What the hell?”

Sam bursts out of Bobby’s house. Every car in the junkyard is on its side, including Baby (Dean is so going to lose his shit). “Dean?” Sam yells. “Bobby? Ellen? Jo? George? Guys, get out here!”

A large German Shepherd nudges Sam’s leg and he looks down. It’s definitely George. He’s probably not going to change back simply because that would make him naked, which would be a little awkward.

Dean stumbles out of his room. “What?” His face pales when he sees the Impala a little ways behind Sam. “What the fuck?”

“What is it?” Ellen asks.

“Look outside!” Jo calls, bounding out of the house. “What the hell could have done this?”

Sam and Dean look at each other. “Castiel?” Sam says, so soft he can barely hear it. He doesn’t know why the angel would do something like this, if he’s even real.

Dean’s eyes widen. “I thought that was a dream!”

“You thought what was a dream?” Bobby asks.

George barks, loudly, and sprints to Bobby’s yard. Sam and Dean exchange looks and follow him. The Skinwalker paces around the disturbed ground you’re buried in, growling low in his throat.

“What is it?” Sam asks and then jumps back when the ground starts to move. It bulges, almost as if something’s crawling just under the surface. Bobby cocks his gun and points it at the ground.

“Y/N?” Sam asks, wondering, and a hand breaks through the surface of the dirt.


End file.
